


Fledgeling

by spirrum



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Kidfic, Spoilers for Here Lies the Abyss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-03-16 03:52:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3473402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spirrum/pseuds/spirrum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She leaves behind a child's laughter and a red, red ribbon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am so sorry.

He is the one who teaches her to read, the one who traces the writing with a fingertip, watching wide eyes follow its path across the page with reverence, and in his ears is her soft voice, tongue clumsily wrapping around the words he reads aloud, one letter at a time.

She's over-eager, like her mother, quick to learn but impatient, bored with a word and wanting to move onto the next before it's fully out of her mouth. But Fenris is patient, even when she sighs with such familiar vexation it steals the breath from his lungs, but he does not falter and holds the book with steady hands, and if there's a tremble in his voice when he asks her to try again it is too small a thing for her to catch, at this age where her joy is a bird perched on the windowsill, and her grief an unexpected bout of bad weather to keep her indoors. Her worries are a child's worries, and he would keep them that way forever if he could. 

There are many things he cannot teach her. He cannot teach her about Ferelden for he only knows so much, andhe cannot teach her the magic she was born to, but he can give her this. And it's a small piece of the mother she'll never know, like the red kerchief tied with care around the soft curls at the nape of her neck. He watches the elegant bow shift with the bob of her head, but he does not reach out to touch it. Isabela's handiwork today; Aveline's is a far more practical knot and easily distinguishable, and Varric's bears no resemblence to either, but his daughter has expressed no preference in how she likes her hair, unwilling to pick her favourites here as anywhere else. Her mother's like in this too, as in so many things. 

He wonders sometimes if she's watching – if she wanders still, in the realm from which she never returned. He wonders if she can tell when their daughter dreams; if she is the one who soothes her nightmares.

He does not know what happens to people, trapped in the Fade –

“Da, what's this say?”

A head tucks against his throat, and she tilts back to look up at him with a cheeky grin. And there is no sorrow in the eyes that meet his, round and endless and summer-green, Isabela's gemstones and his one visible legacy aside from the severe jut of her nose. There is no sorrow because she does not know it, because the sky is long healed and she does not know the cost of that victory, and Fenris is desperately grateful of the fact. 

"Sacrifice," he reads, the word like a stone in his throat, unapologetic in its blunt reminder and of course she'd pick that out of all the words on the page. If he exists, the Maker has her mother's terrible sense of humour. 

"Sa-cri-fice," she repeats. "What's it mean?" 

_Nothing. Everything._ "It's a choice," he says at length. She wrinkles her nose at that, but doesn't ask, already moving on to the next. The bitter irony is lost on her unwearied heart, but Fenris feels it vividly.  _Are you watching, Hawke?_

There is no answer, unsurprisingly, or perhaps not. Fenris does not know what happens to people trapped in the Fade. 

He only knows what happens to those who remain. 


	2. keeper of this nest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because there's more to familial bonds than blood. 
> 
> A short follow-up about the braiding practices of a certain pair of aunts.

“Good work. She looks just about ready to join a nunnery now.”

Tongue caught between her teeth – a habit she’s had since childhood, and often the subject of merciless teasing – Aveline tosses a look across the head of dark hair to where the pirate kneels, a doll in one hand and one brow raised with gleeful challenge. 

Surveying her handiwork, the Guard Captain gives the braid a gentle tug, the feather-soft strands slipping between roughened fingers without resistance. “It’s practical,” she declares, a fingertip grazing the red cloth with care. Deft fingers she’s never had, and not a mind for pretty ribbons, but the knot doesn’t look bad, no matter what the pirate says.

“And all five-year-old girls want  _practical_  hair,” Isabela deadpans. “Perhaps where you grew up, but I’m here now, so we can steer clear of this disaster. Isn’t that right, sweet gull?”

The girl tilts her head. “I don’t mind,” she chirps, with a calm politeness that’s nothing like either of her parents, but Aveline remembers a brief encounter, the memory worn thin by long years, but though she can no longer conjure the younger Hawke’s face, that kindness had made an impression. An odd thing to find, between the dirt and the blood and the darkspawn. A trait borne of greener fields, and lost before it had a chance to grow roots.

“Here. Let me.” And there are hands nudging hers away, tanned and decked with rings, gleaming gold and copper against the dark hair as the braid comes apart.  _These_  are deft fingers – a pick-pocket and a seafarer’s fingers, quick on purse-strings and rope alike, and when Isabela accompanies the braiding with a shanty, drawing giggles with the clever lilt of her voice, the battle appears to be lost.

“There,” she declares a moment later, stepping away to admire her work. The girl jumps from the divan, hands reaching to pat at her hair.

“That,” Aveline says, crossing her arms, “will be undone by the time she makes it down the stairs.”

“At least it will be a  _fun_  trip down the stairs,” Isabela counters. “Your sad attempt would inspire early spinsterhood. What would H–”

She stops. Steals back her words and tucks them away with the skill of a master cutpurse, but Aveline hears them in her vanishing smile; the sharp intake of her breath.  

_What would Hawke say?_

They are silent for exactly one heartbeat. Little ears are perceptive things, and neither of them has the strength to have this conversation today.

In the end they settle for a compromise – a simple braid with a pretty bow. When they’re finished, the subject of their ministrations looks up, toothy grin wide in a bright face.

“All good to go?” Isabela asks, tucking an errant curl behind the round curve of a small ear. The girl nods, curious hands reaching to feel the braid once more, before patting softly against her head, where a few locks have sprung loose in stubborn persistence.

“Well, then. Let’s go find your da, shall we?”

She leaps to her feet, a spring rabbit as she sprints across the room, the braid bouncing against her neck like a whip. Aveline watches her go, a weary weight in an already laden heart.

There’s warmth at her side then, seawater and whiskey, and no mockery now – there hasn’t been in a long time. Nothing truly scathing, anyway. There is no room for that now, not after–

“Still no word?”

To admit it hurts. “Nothing, but we’re still looking. I’m not quitting until I see a corpse.”

The pirate smiles, but it’s a brittle storm, a cold frost against once-bright sails. A hand claps Aveline on the shoulder. “There’s a good girl.”

Footsteps on the landing, before a face pops through the door. “Da says to hurry up!”

The hand falls, and the pirate is quick, her cutpurse’s fingers reaching out to steal the small shape, hoisting it with ease, and laughter spills loudly into the quiet room. The braid swings and the ribbon flashes, a bright arc of red against Aveline’s memory.  _A streak of blood on Wesley’s cold cheek._   _Candles in the Chantry, and an explosion against the night sky._

_A wrist wrapped with love, and the telltale streak across an always-broken nose._

“You coming, big girl?”

She’s tired. There’s no shield on her back now but a city, standing by some miracle she doesn’t know if she dares credit to the Maker, and she feels the full weight as if she bears it herself.

“Tell Fenris to give me a minute,” she says. She needs a moment to breathe, she needs to–

“Take your time,” the pirate says, tugging at the small hands. “Come on, sweet thing, let’s see if we can’t rile your da up a little. Have you ever tried swinging from the chandelier?”

The ribbon bounces merrily. Aveline tries to breathe.

_Damn you, Hawke._

She has never lacked in strength, but her hands tremble now, not around her sword, no, but in those soft dark locks. Aveline doesn’ remember her mother well, but she’d used to dream of soft hands in her hair. She doesn’t know what their little girl dreams of, with her wide smiles and no worries in her young heart. There are no nightmares, Fenris tells her. Aveline does not want to think about what that means, because hope is such a treacherous thing. And if all they do manage to find is a corpse, what then? She sat at her father’s deathbed, as Hawke did hers, and she was there when Hawke cradled her mother in her last moments. If all the girl knows of her mother are good things, good memories, who are they to change it?

Footsteps in the doorway, too heavy for a young girl’s boundless energy, and it’s Fenris who enters now. “I have been sent to check if you’ve climbed out the window.” There is the smallest of smiles there, the barest quirk of the lip, brought about by the only thing that is making any of them smile these days.

And so her own is not false, but it is a poor imitation of real mirth. “I am known for doing that.”

“As Isabela would have us believe.”

The room is silent. A long decade sits between them, and strange, familial bonds, but the words cling to the roof of her mouth, regardless. It’s only with effort that she manages to speak them. “How are you holding up?”

He doesn’t answer immediately, and for a moment Aveline wonders if he will at all. “I am…” he stops, searching for the right words, if there are any to find. Then with a sigh that says more than the words that follow, “I am as I am.”

“That’s two of us.” It’s a petty form of comfort, but it’s all she has to offer. She doesn’t want to say ‘We’ll find her’ or ‘She’s alive, I know it’, because she’s a hard woman of hard truths, and if Hawke is no longer alive – or worse, herself – hoping for the alternative will not have prepared them, any of them, and least of all the little one who matters most.

But, “We haven’t given up,” she adds, because this she can say –  _this_ she can scream until she really can’t breathe, because regardless of what has happened to Hawke, this is a truth that will not change.

Fenris nods, and Aveline breathes, and by some grace, the walls have not yet crumbled around them. The city still stands on trembling legs. A Maker-damned miracle, if such things even exist.

She’s halfway out the door when his voice stops her. “Hawke would be grateful. For all you have done.”

Aveline considers the words – considers Hawke, the one that was ( _is_ , she thinks, because she has to, she must because if she does not who else will?). She thinks about hands clasping hers, pulling her out of the dirt, Wesley’s blood on her gloves and her trembling fingers beneath, but Hawke’s hands were strong – strong for her family, her ailing country. She thinks about the same hands, holding copper marigolds. 

And the same hands, placing a small, slumbering shape into Aveline’s arms with a softly laden utterance:  _‘I’ve had a letter from Varric’._

_Damn you, Hawke._

“It’s the least I can do,” she says.  _It’s not enough_ , she thinks. Pretty red ribbons and sea-shanties and Varric’s bedtime stories are not nearly enough, but it’s not just the city standing on wobbly legs, it’s the lot of them, ripped apart and patched together until what’s left is a semblance of the family that should be but isn’t ( _but could still be_ , she thinks, because she has to, she must, if not for herself then for the others). 

Fenris doesn’t say anything else, but falls into step with her as Aveline walks out. There are voices climbing the stairs from below, one rising above the rest, youthful and bright, and she hears the remnants of Hawke’s laughter in that of her daughter. 

“It’s about time,” Varric declares as they descend to join the rest. Isabela has momentarily forfeited her treasure, and the girl is perched on the dwarf’s shoulders.

“I told you she hadn’t climbed out the window. What a silly thought,” Merrill says. 

The conversation wraps around her, a familiar hum of voices, and it’s almost easy to pretend things are the way they should. Fenris announces it is time to go, helping his daughter down from her perch. But she’s quick to reach for hands to hold, rich in love and generous with her affection in a way that is all Hawke, and there’s a striking familiarity about it when she demands they start walking, and the others fall into step behind her with practiced efficiency. 

As the others walk ahead, Isabela lingers. “Never thought I’d say this, big girl, but our joint effort has borne fruit. That braid is still holding together,” she observes calmly. Aveline looks towards the others, eyes picking out the smallest shape, and the dark head of hair. The red ribbon swings with each step taken; bounces with every turn of her head.

It’s not enough (how could it ever be?), but some of the weight lifts, and Aveline smiles.  _Breathes_. 

“So it is.”


End file.
